On International Women’s Day, celebrated on 8 March, the acting Ombudsman of Spain, Francisco Fernández Marugán, called for a State Pact for Equality and ensured that “a society that does not reconcile is a society with no future”.
Fernandez Marugán notes that 12 years after the passage of the Organic Law 3/2007 for effective equality of women and men still persist in our society problems such as gender violence, working and salary discriminations for women, and problems to reconcile both personal and private life.
The Ombudsman believes that great progress has been made, which must be consolidated, and points out that “this society cannot afford to take a single step backward in terms of equality”.
Further conciliation measures
The Institution has found that women, in general, have more difficulties to access employment suitable to their qualifications and, once found it, they end up encountering more obstacles to advance in their careers than men.
The Ombudsman is concerned about the lack of action to close the pay gap and underlines the need to continue implementing reconciliation measures so that women and men have equal conditions both in the working place and in the family.
Through his daily work, the Ombudsman ensures that the Administrations put all the means at their disposal to ensure that the equality between men and women proclaimed in the Constitution becomes a reality. Thus, he acts to ensure that the legal framework is interpreted in the most favourable and broadest way possible in order to favour the reconciliation of work and family life.
In this sense, the Institution has taken steps to grant flexible working hours for reasons of reconciling personal and working life, for the compatibility of breastfeeding leave with the surplus for taking care of the children, or for the Basic Statute for Public Employees to expressly include the leave for hospitalisation or surgical intervention without hospitalisation of relatives, and relatives of patients who need to rest at home.
The Ombudsman has also asked the Tax Agency that women who have been unfairly dismissed and then readmitted by court decision to their job do not lose the right to the maternity deduction during the period between the dismissal and readmission to work.
According to Fernández Marugán, Public Administrations must be exemplary in the appointments and designations of positions of responsibility and must guarantee the balanced presence of both women and men, as established by the Law on Equality. Thus, for example, in 2018 he recommended (see the recommendation in spanish) the amendment of the Royal Decree by which the Statutes of the Codification Commission (Estatutos de la Comisión de Codificación) are approved, so to ensure the compliance with the balanced presence of women and men.
Male violence
The Ombudsman has reiterated his unconditional support to the victims of male violence and their children. In this sense, the Ombudsman considers essential to strengthen the training and awareness of all personnel involved in the comprehensive protection of victims of this type of violence, through specialized, continuous, obligatory and evaluable training that pays particular attention to the needs of women and their children.
Fernández Marugán considers that “an abuser can never be a good father” and, in order to protect the children, he asks that when a restraining order is issued to a man with respect to a woman, the visiting regime of their offspring should also be suspended. Furthermore, in his opinion, it is necessary that risk assessments carried out by the police when a woman reports mistreatment are accompanied by an individual and specific assessment of the risk situation of her children.
On the other hand, the Ombudsman considers essential that the Government Delegation on Gender Violence adopts new measures to promote and coordinate the Public Administrations involved in the fight against male violence. Thus, he considers that it should be evaluated the possibility of giving instructions to the Family Meeting Points in order to communicate to the units against male violence, to the courts, and to the Public Prosecutor’s Office of any risks they detect that could affect women, girls and boys.
Finally, the Ombudsman denounces that although Organic Law 1/2004 on integral protection measures against gender violence contemplated the creation of integral forensic assessment units throughout the territory, they are still not implemented in all provinces. In this sense, it is urgent that they are fully implemented in order to serve all courts.
Women in penitentiary facilities
The situation of women deprived of their liberty is of particular concern to the Ombudsman, as they constitute a vulnerable group. Only 7.5 % of the population in prisons are women, and due to their smaller numbers, their needs as women sometimes seem to become invisible. Currently, there are only three women’s prisons and the rest serve sentences in modules set up in male prisons.
In 2018, the Institution began to conduct visits with a gender lens to analyse the main problems faced by women deprived of their liberty.
Pensioners
As the Ombudsman stated in his report “Economic Crisis and Inequality 2018” (see the report in spanish), the gender gap in the average amount of pensions is close to 40 % and the proportion of women accessing a retirement pension is also lower than that of men.
On the other hand, according to the official data, 99 % of the beneficiaries of a widow’s pension are women. The Institution has been defending for some time now the need of these pensions to be dignified and sufficient. Thus, he required information to the Administration on the possibility of promoting the improvement of these pensions, provided in the law since 2011. Once the Secretary of State for Social Security informed that this improvement took place in the summer of 2018, the Ombudsman continued his actions after learning that this increase had been denied to people who were once awarded a mandatory old-age and disability insurance pension (SOVI), which was left without economic effects because it was incompatible with the collection of the widow’s pension.
